Sunday, March 2, 2008

From NoQuarterusa.net: "“Earlier today, Sen. Obama attacked Hillary on Iraq by invoking Sen. Rockefeller and incorrectly saying that the WVA Senator opposed the 2002 Iraq vote. The truth is that Sen. Rockefeller voted for the war resolution - not against it as Sen. Obama suggested to the people of Ohio. This seems to be an Obama campaign talking point since its top strategist also claimed that Sen. Rockefeller voted against the war resolution when he was on national television this morning.“’Sen. Obama is so desperate to divert attention from his limited national security experience that he’s not just misleading voters about Sen. Clinton, he’s also misleading voters about his own supporters. That is not change you can believe in.’ — Clinton spokesperson Phil Singer” (Facthub)

(SusanUnPC’s note: I heard Obama campaign manager David Axelrod repeat the same lie about Sen. Rockefeller today on ABC’s This Week. I have relistened to the segment, which is still on my DVR. So it’s a widespread Obama campaign meme for today — to spread this outright lie. It is near the top of the show, at the 55:45 mark [i.e., 55:45 minutes left in the show].) UPDATE: ABC News’s blog, Political Radar, caught both Obama’s and Axelrod’s misstatements today. The quote is below.

QUOTES from ABC News’s blog, Political Radar:

[Obama today at a rally in Westerville, Ohio] then summoned up his newest surrogate, Rockefeller, as an example.

"Jay Rockefeller read it, but she didn’t read it. I don’t know where all that experience got her because I have enough experience to know that if you have a national intelligence estimate and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee says, ‘you should read this, that’s why I voted against the war,’ then you should probably read it."

The problem? Rockefeller voted for war.

Obama’s statement left the impression that Rockefeller was the chair of the Intelligence Committee, read the NIE report and then voted against the war. Rockefeller, who is currently the chair, was not chair at the time and cast his vote for war, not against it.

The Obama campaign says that Obama was referencing former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., then Intelligence Committee chair, who read the NIE report, and voted against the war. They said that Obama knows Rockefeller and Graham’s record on the war vote, but was simply not clear who he was referencing.

Alrighty then. It’s easy to mix up Bob Graham with Jay Rockefeller. It’s easy to forget that Rockefeller cast his vote for the AUMF. It’s easy to recall that Rockefeller wasn’t chair of the Senate intelligence committee at the time. Hey. No big deal, right?

Well, then there’s your “Ax” out there using the same lie. Which means that it was one of today’s big talking points. Which means that you ALL shared the same memo this morning, and consciously spread this lie. And that your people didn’t fact-check any of it. Any of it. Again, from ABC News:

[…]

Slice Obama’s comment with that of the Obama campaign’s chief strategist, David Axelrod’s comments on ABC’s "This Week," when he told George Stephanopoulos Sunday morning, "Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who opposed the war in Iraq, who read the intelligence before the war, which Sen. Clinton concedes she did not, and who said that Barack Obama has the judgment and the maturity and the vision to lead."

The Obama campaign says that Axelrod just misspoke when he said Rockefeller opposed the war."